Today I’m answering more of your questions, so first of all thank you so much for sending questions in and if you have your own burning question that you’d like me to answer then please do send them in because I’m really enjoying seeing what everybody’s got going on and hopefully helping in any way that I can. So you can send me a DM on instagram which is @hharveywrites or you can head to my site HannahHarvey.uk and drop me an email from there.
So questions! Before I get into these questions, there a little bit different to the last episode that I did on questions and answers because they have a slightly different feel to them in that they kind of cover the area which I call ‘the dirty secrets’ aspect of life and not because I think what’s being asked is bad but it’s the bit which we think is bad.
So we’ve all got some thing that we think is only our problem and no one else has to deal with it and if anyone were to find out, that you’d be judged and outcast from society or something like that. And I know this because I’ve been through it all and I’ve worked through all of this stuff and it’s an area that I most want to help people because it just simply isn’t true. I went through the exact same process, I was hugely ashamed to speak up about certain things but not speaking up about them was eating me up.
At times it was causing me to numb with alcohol, it was causing me to neglect my true purpose and calling in life and not live the life that I deserve and that my children deserve. So it really is that big of a deal to have these things that are hidden that we don’t want to talk about. So please, if you take anything from this episode, it’s that your secret is not too bad to say out loud. And I urge you to speak up. To tell somebody you trust or better yet, a therapist that you don’t even know because this, for me, was the path to freedom.
I’ll mention a few organisations in the answers here but if you miss it, i’ll link to everything in the show notes so you can find the help that you need if you need it.
So the first question is quite a long one but I’ll read it to you and this person says;
‘My ex left a year ago after a series of traumas including his father dying and then having covid. He told me he couldn’t cope with our family life and started shutting down from me and all our friends and even the children at times. He was, and still is, drinking heavily. Waking up through the night, sleeping all weekend but functioning at work. We went to two counsellors, one told him they thought he was depressed so he wouldn’t go back. The next told him he wouldn’t engage and for a year I was desperate to help him. I kept letting him come and go until I realised I just couldn’t carry on living in limbo like this. In July I told him to go. I’m feeling stronger all the time but I’m still sad and sometimes really shocked that this has happened. No one fell out of love, no affairs. I’ve struggled in a way not feeling like there was a reason. He can’t accept that his mental health is not good and get help.’
I have a feeling that this is a very common situation in many relationships. And it might not be drinking, it might be other things where your partner isn’t engaging in the way that they used to. And I think the really hard thing here is the idea that there needs to be a reason. There needs to be something bigger than ‘this isn’t working anymore’. Like there has to have been an affair or they have to have walked out on you, or something like that. But sometimes you’ve got to just choose a different future for yourself. And I think especially when you add addiction into the mix and you have children, it’s really very difficult.
I’ve done some courses with a local charity called Escape Family Support and they work with the loved ones of people who are addicts. So if you find yourself in this position, your partner is drinking very heavily or doing drugs or some other destructive addictive behaviour, I would honestly recommend that you reach out to something like Escape because they can support you through the process.
And often when you’re dealing with somebody who has addictions, they will come up with every excuse in the book as to why you’re the crazy one and they aren’t because that’s the way the addict mind works, is to try and convince everyone around them that everything is fine, especially functioning alcoholics like the chap here. He’s working, he’s managing to get to work, he’s doing all the right things but completely unengaged from the bit that you’re involved in. And you don’t have to choose that life, you’re allowed to say ‘I don’t want this anymore’.
So if you’re still in the relationship, maybe go and seek some advice as to how you can engage with your partner so that they can start… They call it ‘engaging with treatment services’. Because there’s some really helpful techniques to help you communicate in a way that isn’t aggressive. It’s much more positive, it’s slowing everything down and not being the nag. Being the person that’s setting boundaries. Making sure that you’re not enabling the behaviour anymore. So I think what this person has done by telling their partner to go is so powerful because you can’t change a cycle as the person who isn’t the addict, you personally can’t change the cycle. It’s up to them, they have to choose it for themselves. And if you stay, you’re enabling the behaviour to continue and it’s not going to change because why would you. Why would you change when everything’s the way you want it.
So as I say, I’ll link to that in the show notes but I strongly advise getting as much support as you can with this because it’s really really tough. And you don’t need to do it alone and it’s not as unusual as you think. So many different people are experiencing this on a daily basis. From the richest to the poorest, it crosses all walks of life, kids to grown ups to grandads. That’s one of those secrets where I’m like, you feel like you’re really alone and that you can’t talk to anybody else but you really must because you need the support to get through it and there is a chance that your marriage doesn’t need to end because of it if you can do something now. So that’s my thoughts on that one.
The background to this ladies question is that she was in an abusive relationship, so her partner was physically violent towards her, then she goes on to say a similar thing to the person before.
So ‘my ex is a drinker and doing drugs and out all the time when I was with family or working and I feel guilty because there was no other woman involved and he insisted he never had another woman in the two years since we split.’
And the thing with that is - how do you know? If your partner is out all night, you don’t know what they’re doing, so just because they say one thing doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the truth. And I would say whatever is going on there, it’s not in your best interest to stay. But the difficulty with this lady is, it was also an abusive relationship so it’s going to be a really complicated, tangled mess of emotions that she will feel towards this partner and leaving will be laced with so much more guilt and emotional psychological abuse because to stay in a relationship like that, many things need to have happened to get to the point where you’re this desperate where you feel like you can’t leave.
So if you relate to this scenario, I highly recommend speaking to your local domestic abuse charity, everywhere in the region has got them, and again I will link in the show notes to a way that you can find yours. But I think there’s huge stigma around this because people don’t like to think of themselves as the victim. And if you’re in an emotionally or physically abusive relationship, the chances are you think it’s your fault. And you’ll be regularly reminded that it was because ‘you did this and you did that’, so it’s really quite difficult to reach out.
A really good thing to watch is the Tina Turner documentary, I’ll link again in the show notes but her describing her relationship with Ike perfectly sums up what that sort of relationship can be like, and if you relate to that in any way, take that as your sign that you need to go and get some support from a charity and they will help you leave. And they will make sure that you stay safe, and they will help you plan your departure.
The other really good one that I read was Big Little Lies. The Nicole Kidman character in that book, the way that she writes about the scenario of her with her violent husband is almost perfection. So again, read that and if you can relate to that in any way, it doesn’t need to be physically violent but all the emotional stuff also fits within that criteria. So again that would be a really good one to read just to see if you think you might be in that kind of scenario because it’s not always easy to notice.
Okay so the next one was from a lovely lady, when she split up with her husband, her children are much older, she left. She literally left with the clothes on her back and went to London. And now, a year later, she needs to come home basically. She’s missing her friends, her business is here, she wants to come home. So she basically said ‘How do I stay in a place that broke me when I’m not fully healed?’
So I totally relate to that need to flee. So it’s the trauma response of fight flight, or freeze. So often people stay where they are because they don’t know what the hell do to so they just freeze. ‘If I stay still, hopefully no one will notice’, that kind of thing. But when something else happens, another reaction would be to flee and go. And I did the equivalent of that, I was living in the countryside and I just went ‘I need to get as far away from this situation as possible’ and went to the coast. Which allowed me to still get my son to school but not be too close to where it all happened.
So I get all that and the funny thing is I’m now getting to the place where I’m probably gonna have to move back, but I think my respite at the coast was what really helped. That ability to sort of nurture what I needed for a while, that allowed me to then go back. So to have to stay in the same place, I know loads of people have to stay in the family home or anything like that and I think the key is surrounding yourself with really good things, being super kind to yourself, taking it very slow, having lovely things to do for yourself as much as you can (it doesn’t need to be expensive), spending time with friends as much as you can, talking to them, and just basically getting whatever help you can get. That’s really crucial. And you know fleeing isn’t always everything because you still have your problems whether you’re in London or you’re in Newcastle so at some point we have to open the cupboard and go through the boxes and look through all these emotions that we’ve had so I think in some ways being back in the place that, as she calls it here ‘broke her’ will actually be incredibly healing.
So thank you so much for all of your questions and please keep them coming in. I’m getting some absolutely fascinating ones. Not just about divorce, about parenting, about the idea of the fairytale lifestyle and then one day when you wake up and go ‘oh, this wasn’t what I planned’ and you know, some people are going through the grief of just realising that they’re a bit older and it’s not what they had in mind. So I’m really looking forward to exploring even more of the different aspects of just generally getting a bit older and divorce is one of those things but there’s so many more aspects to this stage in life and moving through it and moving on for the positive. So thank you so much! Be sure to get in touch with all the rest of your questions and I’ll speak to you again soon.
